Greig Leach

Vincenzo Nibali (Astana) found himself rather isolated after his right hand man, Jakob Fuglsang, went down on the descent of the Col du Palaquit. He apparently hit another rider's water bottle and lost control of his bike at 50 miles per hour leaving a good deal of skin on the mountain. Niblai sent a teammate back to help pace Fuglsang back, although there was little chance he would ever catch back on to the peloton of the elite of the Tour. Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) noticing a chance to gain time on Nibali, put Jose Joaquim Rojas and the rest of his remaining teammates on the front to put pressure on all of those ahead of him on the General Classification. Rojas, looked behing to see just how effective his efforts had been before he rolled off the front, and did his best to make it the rest of the way up the climb of Chamrousse.